


The End of The Line(s)

by IMakeMyselfLol



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Big Gay Love Story, Love Poems, M/M, Mutual Pining, Poetry, Pre-Slash, Prose Poem, Relationship Reveal, True Love, War
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-21
Updated: 2018-06-21
Packaged: 2019-05-26 11:15:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14999729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IMakeMyselfLol/pseuds/IMakeMyselfLol
Summary: Who touches you now but the enemy and the ice?





	1. Chapter 1

**I.**

 

What survives the war is not pretty

 

It is staring eyes glinting from the farthest corner of the room

 

And the throat wrench, a screeching wish to shed your skin like a snake,

 

to leave yourself behind

Where memory is a long, dark, corridor in a deserted school building

 

But who are you without the empty rooms?

 

Who are you inside of them?

 

The war never changes

But you do

 

Over and over and over

A clock running wild

Jolted into working order

 

How do you fight when you are the enemy?

How do you breathe?

The war licks its way into

A body that is not your own

Or it is now

 

Because

If you do not own this body

All you own are the deeds it has done

And years of barren rooms.

 

 

All you know is ice

 

Like a gunshot;

familiar

And your tongue drips in rhythms just off beat enough

to jar

But at least they are fluid

You think

 

At least they are not ice

 

The war was yesterday

Ten minutes ago

A lifetime away

And you are a bullet casing trapped behind museum glass

 

But you are here and nothing has changed

Except the frontline

and everything else you have known

 

Without you

 

And sometimes the war is a place you miss

Like your mother

Because even the war was not so lonely as this

where you can howl and no one would hear you

 

Once you had something to come home to

But this place you have fought for

 

Died for

 

Bears the name but none of the gravity

And you are tired

But the war is relentless and so must you be

 

Who touches you now but the enemy and the ice?

 

The right side of your bed is a frozen wasteland

And no one is there to watch you shiver in your sleep 

the ghost of a fever and a wracking cough

The ghost of a man

Trapped between two wars and two worlds

 

Alone.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**II.**

Winter

 

That is what they called him

As if he was some barren hell

 

And you want to weep

Because here is the ice again haunting you

 

In an echo of a man

Whose face

Burned into your eyelids

you have woken up from

with damp cheeks and an ocean

for a pillow

 

this time he is real

And they called him Winter

 

But he is the blazing heat of a summer in Brooklyn

 

The smell of the tarmac melting

 

Sweaty pennies collected in a bronze dragons hoard and used to buy an ice cream

 

A fire hydrant bursting into a fountain that you run through hand in hand

 

as he smiles at you

And your heart doesn’t know yet that this is irreversible

So you smiled right back

 

Winter is sharp in places he was not

 

You know because his arm curves around yours

and knocks you to the ground

and he is fighting like he was born to do it

like it’s a fire that consumes every part of him

 

And you know that if he is nothing else you knew

He could never be winter.

 

 

 

You know the man who’s cheek wraps around your fist

like a blanket

 

Or he seems to know you

 

Blue eyes boring into yours as the mask drops

And for a second you think

Maybe he is going to cry

 

And it makes you happy

 

Or sick

You haven’t been able to understand the difference

since

 

Malfunction

 

You are a soldier

But he calls you a name that falls from his lips like a memory

 

And you recognized this feeling

 

A good asset is always well acquainted with fear

 

So he calls you a name

And you flee

Malfunction malfunction malfunction

 

But it nestles in your head like a wire

Coiling and choking

And you just keep on running

 

Who are you when the empty roomsbegin to fill?

Who are you if not Winter?

 

Who are you if you are Bucky?

 

You do not know.

You are afraid to find out.


	3. Chapter 3

**iii.**

 

You find him where you find yourself

 

In the midst of the fray

 

And your lungs finally release the last of the water

when he agrees to go with you;

 

So you make a choice

That isn’t really a choice

 

Because there is no one but him,

You think,

The world could burn,

as long as you still have him

 

And you have splintered before

but it is a revelation

to be the enemy of the people

that have demanded your soul

 

As if you have not done enough

 

Losing everything you have built in this home that is not home

Seems insignificant in the face of him

 

They can take everything else

But you know that he is your heart

 

And you cannot lose him again

and live.

 

 

 

Memory is a bus that hits you

Out of nowhere

 

In scents and moments too unpredictable to grasp

Like his body had been

Drifting to the bottom of yet another watery grave

 

Before anything else you know that to lose him would be to lose yourself

And so you drag him from the wreckage

 

And he drags you from your own

 

A careful tango

The line between friends and more thrumming as you whirl over and back

It is the one memory you wish you could call to you

 

Did you have him, before all of this?

 

Was there a time when you were happy,

and he did not look at you like the next move you make will inevitably be towards the door?

 

 

How could you have been anything else if he is willing to tear the world apart for you

 

How can you tell him that he is making an incalculable mistake?

 

Does he understand what you have done,

You think,

Or what he has,

 

You cannot blame them for coming after you both

 

There was a time -

A lifetime ago

 

When you would have done the same

If faced with a monster

 

Faced with yourself.


End file.
